Fascinating article Capt...here in the US, my dad, who is a corporate exec. does a good deal of traveling domestically throughout the US, and his company buys coach fares but he gets automatically upgraded...he almost never travels internationally though so I cant really say on that...

I work for a multinational and I am not an exec.
Policy for them is to fly first inside Us or Biz in Europe - I see a lot of Concorde discount tickets flying around my desk and I am always unable to grab one!!!

For me, sloooowly rising on the ladder the policy is economy no matter where.
What happens is that finance has to read economy on the ticket, so I can buy an unrestricted economy which most of the times is automatically upgraded to discounted biz ( and this thanks to a great travel agent which knows our needs).
We are free to choose airlines and routings as much as we meet appointements on time.
On leisure I fly biz, for passion, and I pay the fare. It is my private luxury.
as for hotels are concerned, we are able to stay wherever we please as much as we don't exceed 300 USD per night ( if more they question, if you have a good explanation for the choice then it is ok) but for tokyo where we go up to 500 USD per night.

My bosses, well, no cap and no limit.
I am sure that by the time I'll get there ( If I do...) they will chop those privileges...

I was quite interested in hearing Nestle's policy of placing staff in J on 6+ hour flights....in my father's old company, it was split between F, J and Y solely on Seniority.....so obviously F was reserved for Managing Directors/Chairmen, J for board of directors etc.

What I found a slight waste of money, was that the company in question had a policy of transporting not only the employee, but his whole family in First (where applicable)....now that must be expensive.